Goya is the latest company to discover that our nation’s most powerful protest is now the boycott.
The Goya CEO stepped in it last week when he lathered our president with praise, which is not a good look for a company that sells most of its product at a community continually demeaned and targeted by said president. Reaction from the Hispanic community was swift, unified and understandable. Social media feeds filled with comments about a Goya boycott and the company is now in trouble.
The most amusing response came from Sen. Rafael Cruz, R-Texas, who put together two whopping lies in the same tweet. He said his Cuban grandparents ate Goya every day for 90 years, which is impossible since his parents lived in Cuba and Goya didn’t even exist in the U.S. for that long. He also said the boycott was an act to suppress speech when, obviously, it is the complete opposite.
Cruz’s tweet is a perfect example of Republican hypocrisy in 2020 and the success that protests now have. For one, Cruz tried to start a similar boycott of Nike in 2016 when they signed Colin Kaepernick in the wake of his kneeling. Cruz’s boycott had little to no impact, and Nike sales actually increased after signing Kaepernick.
Other protests in the Trump era, though, have been successful. We’ve seen Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham’s nightly racist shows on Fox News lose sponsors as well as unexpected vacations by the hosts in the wake of particularly nasty segments. Tucker, as I write this, is on one right now because his head writer was exposed for vile, racist comments on message boards. Papa John’s Pizza prominently features new board member Shaquille O’Neal in all of its commercials, after his previous CEO nearly sunk the company with his racist comments.
Even the sports world has been impacted, as the Washington NFL team is finally changing its racist nickname. Did the decades of protests sway owner Dan Snyder? Of course not. But once FedEx threatened to pull millions of sponsorship dollars, the name change was fast-tracked.
Starting in October 2016, the online “#GrabYourWallet” campaign aimed at Trump’s family business succeeded, as retailers dropped Trump merchandise until Ivanka closed down her company in 2018. Trump’s hotels and golf courses saw their revenues plummet in the wake of his racist campaign for President in 2016.
Most recently, the boycott by large corporations of Facebook advertising started in July -- a very rare company-on-company boycott -- hurt Facebook’s stock price and led the company to discuss “pausing” political ads in 2020 due to pressure.
Our capitalist society has felt very much on edge in the Trump era, as Republican leaders in state and federal government consistently favor corporations over its citizens. So it only makes sense that the citizens' greatest weapon in fighting back has been their wallet.
There is no form of protest more peaceful than a boycott, and it’s become the most successful. The CEO class may not be moved by emotion or morals, but they are moved by the bottom line being negatively impacted.
I write all these words because it’s fascinating that the American consumer has discovered its powerful weapon and has yet to use it against what seems to be a logical enemy in Amazon.
When I worry about the future, I don’t think about the movie Idiocracy. Who wouldn’t love a motorcycle riding President who hosts his version of Monday Night Football? No, the future that worries me was portrayed in Wall-E, as humans left planet Earth to board the ruling corporation’s giant spaceship in go-karts because our legs no longer work.
There’s too big to fail, and then there’s whatever Amazon has become. Jeff Bezos is on his way to becoming a trillionaire as millions of Americans are unemployed and millions more teeter on the brink of economic ruin.
Amazon has come through coronavirus as a big winner since we can’t go anywhere, so the orders keep piling up. Despite Amazon’s revenue going up, up, up, the environment for its workers keeps going down, down, down.
From the beginning, Amazon made it abundantly clear they did not care for its employees. One of the first big labor stories of the pandemic was the company firing someone who called for better working conditions.
Since then, Amazon has paid lip service to keeping its employees safe and all of its ads are now targeted on making all of us feel better when we order from them. But the truth remains that Amazon is doing everything possible to prevent its workers from unionizing.
So I make a simple plea: let’s stop using Amazon until its workers unionize.
I know what you’re thinking. “That will never happen and I still need to order stuff online.” That’s right, you do. And there are other places to order from.
Giving up on Amazon will be easier than you think. There is very, very little that is exclusive to Amazon. We simply default to using it because we’ve always done it and we think it’s easy. Well, unionizing isn’t easy, and that’s a more worthy goal. We can spend an extra five minutes or extra five dollars on an online order to make change happen.
I’ll give a real world example that made me reevaluate what I’m doing. I’ve done everything in my power to not use Amazon and I don’t think I have in 2020. Except when my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday and I sent her an Amazon link to the newest Andre The Giant biography.
I did that because I was lazy. It was the first search result. I know my mom clicked that link and ordered it from Amazon. If I had just scrolled down two links further on the Google search page, I could’ve sent her a link from IndieBound or Barnes & Noble. But I didn’t. I won’t make that mistake again.
If we truly want the change that so many of us clamor for on our social media pages, we have to start with ourselves. I can’t claim to support Amazon workers if I’m still supporting Amazon executives.
I can spend an extra few minutes to find a better company to order books, even if it costs a little bit more. You can too. Our wallets are a powerful weapon. Let’s use everything in our arsenal.
Follow me on Twitter
The most amusing response came from Sen. Rafael Cruz, R-Texas, who put together two whopping lies in the same tweet. He said his Cuban grandparents ate Goya every day for 90 years, which is impossible since his parents lived in Cuba and Goya didn’t even exist in the U.S. for that long. He also said the boycott was an act to suppress speech when, obviously, it is the complete opposite.
Cruz’s tweet is a perfect example of Republican hypocrisy in 2020 and the success that protests now have. For one, Cruz tried to start a similar boycott of Nike in 2016 when they signed Colin Kaepernick in the wake of his kneeling. Cruz’s boycott had little to no impact, and Nike sales actually increased after signing Kaepernick.
Other protests in the Trump era, though, have been successful. We’ve seen Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham’s nightly racist shows on Fox News lose sponsors as well as unexpected vacations by the hosts in the wake of particularly nasty segments. Tucker, as I write this, is on one right now because his head writer was exposed for vile, racist comments on message boards. Papa John’s Pizza prominently features new board member Shaquille O’Neal in all of its commercials, after his previous CEO nearly sunk the company with his racist comments.
Even the sports world has been impacted, as the Washington NFL team is finally changing its racist nickname. Did the decades of protests sway owner Dan Snyder? Of course not. But once FedEx threatened to pull millions of sponsorship dollars, the name change was fast-tracked.
Starting in October 2016, the online “#GrabYourWallet” campaign aimed at Trump’s family business succeeded, as retailers dropped Trump merchandise until Ivanka closed down her company in 2018. Trump’s hotels and golf courses saw their revenues plummet in the wake of his racist campaign for President in 2016.
Most recently, the boycott by large corporations of Facebook advertising started in July -- a very rare company-on-company boycott -- hurt Facebook’s stock price and led the company to discuss “pausing” political ads in 2020 due to pressure.
Our capitalist society has felt very much on edge in the Trump era, as Republican leaders in state and federal government consistently favor corporations over its citizens. So it only makes sense that the citizens' greatest weapon in fighting back has been their wallet.
There is no form of protest more peaceful than a boycott, and it’s become the most successful. The CEO class may not be moved by emotion or morals, but they are moved by the bottom line being negatively impacted.
I write all these words because it’s fascinating that the American consumer has discovered its powerful weapon and has yet to use it against what seems to be a logical enemy in Amazon.
When I worry about the future, I don’t think about the movie Idiocracy. Who wouldn’t love a motorcycle riding President who hosts his version of Monday Night Football? No, the future that worries me was portrayed in Wall-E, as humans left planet Earth to board the ruling corporation’s giant spaceship in go-karts because our legs no longer work.
There’s too big to fail, and then there’s whatever Amazon has become. Jeff Bezos is on his way to becoming a trillionaire as millions of Americans are unemployed and millions more teeter on the brink of economic ruin.
Amazon has come through coronavirus as a big winner since we can’t go anywhere, so the orders keep piling up. Despite Amazon’s revenue going up, up, up, the environment for its workers keeps going down, down, down.
Since then, Amazon has paid lip service to keeping its employees safe and all of its ads are now targeted on making all of us feel better when we order from them. But the truth remains that Amazon is doing everything possible to prevent its workers from unionizing.
So I make a simple plea: let’s stop using Amazon until its workers unionize.
I know what you’re thinking. “That will never happen and I still need to order stuff online.” That’s right, you do. And there are other places to order from.
Giving up on Amazon will be easier than you think. There is very, very little that is exclusive to Amazon. We simply default to using it because we’ve always done it and we think it’s easy. Well, unionizing isn’t easy, and that’s a more worthy goal. We can spend an extra five minutes or extra five dollars on an online order to make change happen.
I’ll give a real world example that made me reevaluate what I’m doing. I’ve done everything in my power to not use Amazon and I don’t think I have in 2020. Except when my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday and I sent her an Amazon link to the newest Andre The Giant biography.
I did that because I was lazy. It was the first search result. I know my mom clicked that link and ordered it from Amazon. If I had just scrolled down two links further on the Google search page, I could’ve sent her a link from IndieBound or Barnes & Noble. But I didn’t. I won’t make that mistake again.
If we truly want the change that so many of us clamor for on our social media pages, we have to start with ourselves. I can’t claim to support Amazon workers if I’m still supporting Amazon executives.
I can spend an extra few minutes to find a better company to order books, even if it costs a little bit more. You can too. Our wallets are a powerful weapon. Let’s use everything in our arsenal.
Follow me on Twitter
Comments
Post a Comment